Messaging in Moodle 3.4

Messaging in Moodle 3.4

by Mary Beth McKee -
Number of replies: 6

We recently upgraded from Moodle 3.2 to Moodle 3.4.2 (Build: 20180319).

After the upgrade, our faculty starting getting an error message when trying to message students from the Participants page. See below.

I am an Admin for our Moodle instance, and when I updated the Teacher Role permissions for the setting 'Send messages to any user' from Not Set to Allow, it still did not resolve the issue.

Any suggestions for other permissions or settings to check? Thanks in advance for any leads.

Mary Beth 

error message




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In reply to Mary Beth McKee

Re: Messaging in Moodle 3.4

by Colin Fraser -
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As I understand it, you now have to go into Site Admin > Advanced Features and make sure the "Enable Messaging System" is checked. It should  default to 'Yes', but sometimes... 

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In reply to Colin Fraser

Re: Messaging in Moodle 3.4

by Mary Beth McKee -

Hi Colin,

We did have the Messaging Enabled, and after more exploration, it appears to be an actual bug.  Here is a link to the issue in our Moodle Tracker.

Thanks,

Mary Beth


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In reply to Mary Beth McKee

Re: Messaging in Moodle 3.4

by Howard Miller -
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Taking your bug report at face value, the issue is that to run that webservice the current user needs to have the capability 'moodle/site:sendmessage' defined in the site context. I don't suppose a teacher will have this. 

BUT... the docs for the capability provide a clue. "The default authenticated user role has this capability set to allow". Are you *sure* this hasn't been changed for your Authenticated User role?

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In reply to Howard Miller

Re: Messaging in Moodle 3.4

by Madhu Avasarala -

I am facing the same issue and I am using Moodle 3.5+ 

My desired scenario: No body but teachers can message to any and all on the participants list inside of a course.

Permissions (for moodle/site:sendmessage'):

Authenticated user: Not Set'

Student: Not Set

Teacher: Allowed

Result: Teachers are unable to send messages because of error claiming that permission for above flag is not set.

Per your message, if Teacher is to be able to send messages then so can any authenticated user including students which vitiates achieving my goal. Looks like it is quite a common goal.

Is my understanding correct?

Thanks

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In reply to Madhu Avasarala

Messaging just teachers (was Re: Messaging in Moodle 3.4)

by Sam Mudle -

am facing the same issue and I am using Moodle 3.5+ 

My desired scenario: No body but teachers can message to any and all on the participants list inside of a course.

Permissions (for moodle/site:sendmessage'):

Authenticated user: Not Set'

Student: Not Set

Teacher: Allowed

Result: Teachers are unable to send messages because of error claiming that permission for above flag is not set.

Per your message, if Teacher is to be able to send messages then so can any authenticated user including students which vitiates achieving my goal. Looks like it is quite a common goal.

Is my understanding correct?

Thanks

Mary was just trying to get messaging to work.  She didn't care if students messaged other students like you and I do.

The main issue with the sendmessage permission is that it is all or nothing.  If you deactivate it, then student's can't send teacher's messages as well.  So to prevent them from messaging students, you have to ALSO prevent them from messaging teachers.

What most people want is to enable teacher-to-student messaging only.  Unfortunately, moodle messaging doesn't support this, and you have to hack moodle code to make it work.

For 3.4 and 3.5, if you are willing to add a few lines of code, it makes it happen:

https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=360307

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In reply to Howard Miller

Re: Messaging in Moodle 3.4

by Mary Beth McKee -

Hi Howard,

Thanks so much for taking the time to respond! When I changed the 'Send messages to any user' from Not Set to Allow for the Authenticated User, the issue was resolved.

Best regards,

Mary Beth


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